Roy Notowitz

Executive Search

0-10 Employees, Service

Personal Insights

What matters most to us:

Finding a home for the great talent we have in Portland.

What we learned:

At first pass reviewing the 150 detailed questions, we thought for sure we were going to get a passing grade. However, we quickly started to see some of our shortcomings in the areas of policies, procedures and documentation. For example, as a relatively young and small company, we had never taken the time to develop an employee handbook. We encouraged community involvement, but we did not have a formal policy to provide employees paid time off for days of community service, or to match donations to nonprofits of their choice. Uh oh. We might have "talked the talk," but did we really walk the walk? If the Assessment could talk it would have said, "Nice try, Notogroup, you can do better."

What we did as a result:

Some of our action items included developing a stated code of ethics to align with our values and service standards, establishing a more formal volunteer service and community engagement program, incorporating social and environmental evaluation in performance reviews, launching a process for measuring and reducing overall energy use, integrating the “benefit mission” into our operating agreement, and clarifying our company’s mission for the primary "change we seek" as an organization. The culmination of these changes ultimately resulted in the drafting of a customized, 35-plus page employee handbook that specifies our values, mission, policies and benefits. As a service firm, we must attract and retain the absolute best and brightest talent in order to be able to thrive. We now have a roadmap and the tools to follow through on our commitment to being a great place to work for all the right reasons.